Community
8 April, 2026
Train convention kicks off
HUNDREDS flocked to Cobden Miniature Railway over the long weekend as the South Western Model Engineers Inc hosted the Australian Association of Live Steamers annual convention.
South Western Model Engineers secretary Sharron Howard said the club members were proud to be a part of the convention and to play host to such a big event.
“Over all four days of the Australian Association of Live Steamers (AALS) annual convention, we had maybe 200 people,” she said.
“They brought steam trains, battery trains and petrol trains.
“We had a total of 45 visiting trains.
“We had people bring trains from Tasmania, Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.
“We also had some people fly in from New Zealand.”
Mrs Howard said the event was popular not just for visiting enthusiasts but also for the general public.
“Every year the convention is really popular,” she said.
“We did over 850 rides on Sunday.
“We used all the visiting trains and two of our own, but the majority was all the visiting ones.
“We had a lot of our regulars come and say how good it was to see visiting trains.
“Mainly the visitors just drove trains for the whole weekend, and a few of the visitors went out and did some sightseeing around the local area, down around the 12 Apostles, Apostle Whey Cheese, Timboon Ice Cream, all the local Cobden shops – they went down through our shops down the street.”
Mrs Howard thanked everyone who made it possible to make the event run smoothly.
“It was really good to be the host of the convention, we had a good lot of community support,” she said.
“Corangamite Shire and Cobden and Camperdown Community Bank Bendigo Bank, they helped us out.
“Wannon Water gave us some bags and water fountains and Cobden Bakery helped us out with some bread and rolls.
“The bakery normally doesn’t open over Easter but they opened especially to cook some things that we needed for the weekend.”
There was also a raffle for visiting train enthusiasts of the convention, which Mrs Howard said was a hit.
“We had a raffle just for the visitors that were here – it was a quilt, and it was made by Helen Smith of Cobden Sewing Machines,” she said.
“That was really good – thanks so much to her for donating all her time to make that quilt.
“Thank you to all our members of the South Western Model Engineers for doing a good, busy weekend and thanks to the community for supporting us.”
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